Poetry

Often, we love best what is hidden: the locket,our initials etched entwined on the back,the wool coat’s pink silk lining, the paintingbeneath a painting, its faint hills and far-off church.Last month I bought a pitcher, only to discover that,when tipped to pour, it reveals a hidden message underneath.We love whatever is inscribed, whatever’s whisperedin the…

Awake in the blue hour, something pleasant just out of reach, the only movement an incandescent flicker: the pulse at his throat. I want to want to put my mouth on it, to tongue each salty crevice of his neck but don’t. After 20 years of waking here I just watch the beat lift his…

How is starlight travelingin the scald of day?I don’t know, but I’m sureit does. And that star over youhas lit candles in the baywhere the fish never sleepand where my breathgoes wanderingamong the harbor lightscarrying the dreams I rememberand the ones I forget, thoserendered over in order to balance outforever, a notion which asks,in its…

Saturday as an old friend Sits like a sphynx queen On the Daedalus roof deck, I pray that she too Is not pregnant before me. Sunday, I finish the porch Back in VT under What is apparently called A Strawberry Moon. White-blue paint Spits into the black Plants below while I howl THIS IS MY…

I watch them smear themselves Around the world and worry. I want them with me. To fold Them inside a garish treasure Chest that I will lower into the sea. There’s me, middling on The perfect surface of the mad Pacific While my best loves sleep Beneath, conserved, Coldbodied. Kept Souls keeping me. Their bodies…

in your best bluesy voice. I wantto start over. Not at the beginningbut where something takes hold thatcould never belong to me. Breathby the fringe of the sea, I give you backmy first child-cries, the smear of worldthat took hold as flesh, Time with itsshake-down-the-house hungeralarms, its eyelid of darkthat even now closes over mewith…

Walk alive in the woodsin the waking faint of Spring,on circling pathwaysbeside a goose-honking lake,through Sapsucker Woods’dense wetlands and forest,as a papier-mâché moon floatsover mud-dried leaves,sunglare flashes chrome off the water,gold bursts of marsh marigoldsrise from green tussocks,and hairy ropes of poison ivysnake around the barkof old dogwoods, ash, hemlocks,and one dead hornbeam,whittled by weather,…

The fridge don’t work. The milk comes out thick; when you shake the jug it sloshes heavy-footed breaking through the gospel of your grandmother’s duplex; her fridge always broke, and you always questioned why like why we gotta refrigerate in the freezer? Like why we gotta unthaw the milk for breakfast? The answer is because,…

Somebody says dig deep. Hunker down like you would in the onlybed you’d ever slept. With a flannel blanket head to toe, its color-hued fortonly you know, distorting the under-light. Venture back to that kingdom.It was not the fetal position; you had no need to hide. Markthe Noah’s ark measuring stick the height your daddy…